5 posts from April 2007

April 25, 2007

The International Herald Tribune writes... "The Mexico City legislature approved a
bill Tuesday to make abortion legal during the first three months of
pregnancy, a watershed vote that set the stage for court battles and
social clashes between religious conservatives and liberals. Feminists hailed the vote as a clear victory. For decades, poor
women here have resorted to clandestine clinics, traditional midwives
and herbal potions to end unwanted pregnancies. Scores die every year
in botched abortions. "It's a triumph for women's rights," said María
Consuelo Mejía, the director of Catholics for the Right to Decide. Abortion opponents condemned the measure. "This is a tragic day for
the democracy," said Armando Martínez, the leader of Catholic Lawyers."

A really interesting thing was to see the kind of political posters
being developed for the pro-choice movement. Pictured here is a
poster from activists in Mexico City. Pictured below it is a poster
designed here in Oakland, CA by Design Action Collective, for the Bay Area Coalition for Our Repro Rights (BACORR) action against the "Walk for LIfe" in January. If anyone could help me locate a copy of the poster from Mexico, I would greatly appreciate it.

April 19, 2007

I am back from a tremendously inspiring trip to Rome, Italy. I returned on April 18th, after a 1 week short stay. I had traveled to the participate in the hanging and the opening of the YO! What Happened to Peace! Show which took place at the House of Love & Dissent. The House of Love & Dissent is a space which was founded and is currently directed, by Marco Delli Santi, pictured here with John Carr. I was 1 of 5 people who traveled to Rome from the United States. The others were: John Carr, YO! Show founder and curator, who we lovingly renamed "Jhoni Caro" on the trip; Caton Volk, YO! producer and young director whose creativity has reached the internet, television and live events. Katherine Kirby, YO! Show Coordinator; and Karen Fiorito, YO! Artist and Master Printer who received her Master's in Fine Art in Printmaking from Arizona State
University.

I arrived on Thursday morning, and that same day we began hanging the show. We spent most of Thursday, ALL of Friday, and a portion of Saturday hanging the show which opened on Sat, April 14th @ 6pm. I hardly slept but with those Italian expresso's and with the excitement of the YO! Show, no sleep was needed. You can see all the fabulous pictures from the hanging by clicking here.

From the moment we arrived, the YO! Show and the crew received alot of love from the community in Rome, Italy. We were introduced to three really DOPE Italian political artists, Sten, Lex, and Lucamaleonte. Sten and Lex are both stencil artists. Lucamaleonte did a piece about Carlo Gulliani, the young Italian activist killed at the G8 Summit in Genoa by police. Some important facts about the G8 Summit which took place in 2001 were: About $110 million was spent on hosting the summit and at least 15,000 police and military were deployed. CNN said, "
Riots overshadowed the G8 meeting of world leaders in Genoa, Italy."

We were written about in "OFF, Quotidiano di Spettacolo" and appeared on TV in a news segment, which had some great coverage. The links to these outlets will be up soon.

April 18, 2007

One of the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting was a Peruano, Daniel Perez Cueva. I pulled this about him from the New York Times," Back home in Peru, Daniel Perez Cueva was a member of the national
swimming federation and an accomplished student who loved to sing and
dance. But he came to the United States because he wanted a degree from an
American university. He began his studies at the University of Miami
and then transferred last year to Virginia Tech, where he majored in
international relations."

He was barely more than a year from a college degree — a dream that
fueled him since emigrating from Peru with his mother and sister in
2000 — when he was killed Monday in French class at Norris Hall.

"His goal was to finish his education at Virginia Tech because the
university is very prestigious within the United States," his mother,
Betty Cueva, told the Peruvian radio station RPP Noticias. "My son drew
up an objective and he did everything possible to reach it."

She said her son had been in the process of looking for jobs in
Washington. He was one of 30 students killed in Norris Hall on Monday
morning.

"This is very difficult for me, something I cannot apprehend," Mrs.
Cueva told the radio station. "I want to think that he is alive.
Together my son and I went through good and bad times in this country;
my children are everything to me."

April 10, 2007

I have just returned from Williamstown, Mass. from an exciting event which took place this past weekend, April 6-8th, 2007 at Williams College. The conference was part of the East Coast Chicano Student Forum (ECCSF) and was hosted by VISTA, Williams College Latino student organization. The theme was “Trafficking Bodies: Agitation through media art and performance.” It was a tremendously inspriring event, because I was able to meet up with artists that I have wanted to collaborate with. A special thanks to the student organizers of this event, pictured here. (photo from left to right: name unknown :(, Ariana, Sergio, and Luz Gomez)

The aim with this conference is to depart from traditional representations of urban turmoil, border industrialization, performance of labor, and disjuncture within feminist discourses. The event opened up with the screening of Señorita Extraviada, a film by Lourdes Portillo. The film tells the story of hundreds of kinapped, raped, and murdered young women of Júarez, Mexico, which first came to light in 1993. I saw Lourdes film in 2003, and it was so powerful that I was moved to develop a poster about the Juarez murders, which I later did in 2004. It was a true pleasure to meet Lourdes because her mission as a filmmaker have shaped my own commitment as a political artist. She sees her mission as "channeling the hopes and dreams of a people."
Clearly, political commitment has inspired her choice of subjects. A film I would greatly recommend is The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, which was nomited for the Academy's Best Documentary in 1985. (photo shows Lourdes Portillo on the left)

The next day opened up with the screening of Maquilapolils, a film by Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre. The film depicts the lives of maquiladora workers who produce televisions,
electrical cables, toys, clothes, batteries and IV tubes, as they weave
the very fabric of life for consumer nations and confront labor
violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos -- life on the
frontier of the global economy. In Maquilapolis, characters Carmen and
her colleague Lourdes reach beyond the daily struggle for survival to
organize for change.

Sergio De La Torre was at the conference to discuss the film. I had met Sergio in San Francisco last year during a workshop at Intersection for the Arts. He is a photographer and
performance/installation artist, grew up in the Tijuana/San
Diego border area and migrated to San Francisco. His photographic,
performance and installation works have focused on issues regarding
diaspora/tourism and identity politics. De La Torre's
works includes ACCESS DENIED, DISAPPEARING and MEXICLONE. (photo on the right is Sergio at Massachusetts Museum of Conteporary Art, where we were checking out an installation by one of his friends, Yoshua Okon, at "The Believers" - more on that later)

I had the pleasure of being introduced to the performance art of Nao Bustamante, also a presenter at the conference. Nao is an internationally known performance and video artist originating from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her work encompasses performance art, sculpture, installation and video. She has performed throughout Asia, North Africa, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico and of course the US. In 2001 she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship. Currently she is living in New York and holds the position as Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I am really looking forward to building a working relationship with this sistah. Interestingly, Nao was the first performer at La Panaderia, an arts space founded by Yoshua Okon, who was also exhibiting that weekend at Mass MOCA and who I will talk about next.

During the time I was living in Mexico City in La Condesa, I was told frequently about a space that existed in that neighborhood called La Panaderia. As an alternative space, La Panadería helped promote young artists as well as artists
who were not necessarily valued by the mainstream. La Panadería’s
program emphasized the integration of eclectic marginal practices and
became an important social center for the contemporary art scene as
well as a reference point. Yoshua Okon was one of the founders of La Panaderia, and friend of Nao and Sergio, and exhibiting artist at Mass MOCA's show, The Believers, which opened the same weekend we were presenting in Williams. (photo from left to right: Nao Bustamante, Yoshua Okon & Sergio De La Torre)Yoshua Okón and Fritz Haeg installed a new work which included Plan B: Dymaxion Projections,
a 70'x 20' mural/graphic of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion map of earth.
It served as a legend to the locations of significant alternative
communities of the 20th century. Located in front of the map was Plan B: Geodesic Dens,
three geodesic domes which visitors could enter. Inside the domes there were binders of collected research and documentation of the utopian
communities referenced on the map. The dome consisted of a pre-fab
aluminum frame with a fabric cover featuring digitally produced
graphics. The Believers will be on display April 7, 2007 through October 2007 at MASS MoCA.

The Saturday evening wrapped of course, with a stop at the local bar for drinks!

The opening in Rome also marks the introduction of a "Yo! What Happened to Peace?" book featuring 144 full-color pages, an introduction by punk art legend Winston Smith and a street-ready stencil cover. Printed in Italy, the book is now available in the U.S. for sale through yowhathappenedtopeace.org.

The Yo! show was conceived in 2002 during the march to war in Iraq. Launched with 14 posters in Tokyo, the international exhibition has grown to feature work from more than 130 artists. Past shows have included New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Milan, Reykjavik, Washington D.C., Boston and Chicago.